Then reign'd the tragick Muse, enthron'd on high, Awe in her mien, and lightning in her eye!

mischances of the lovers are partly due to the intervention of Oberon; and it is one of my most firmly established canons of criticism, that no profound interest can be felt for the victim of any human misery, from which the author has no means of relieving him but that which is superhuman. The Greek and French stages are both against us in this respect'; but we have a better authority than either, in the example of Shakespeare, who has nothing of this kind. Events that are purely human are, with him, left to proceed and end in their natural course. Murder brings its remorse and punishment. The ghost in Hamlet, and the witches in Macbeth, give the main spring to the action, they impel their hero; but they neither assist nor retard his enterprises the results would be the same without as with them.

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The underplot or episode of the "hard-handed men that work in Athens," is one of those rich pieces of humour in which Shakespeare luxuriates. Can imagination conceive a more whimsical company of comedians than Quince, Starveling, Bottom, and their fellows?—with their stage directions and properties, their cast of characters, their tender regard for the feelings of the ladies, as exemplified in the histrionic weaver and his precautionary prologues; in which he informs his audience that he is not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver, and that Snug the joiner is no lion, but a man as other men are!-This is not the only hit at the heroes of the sock and buskin that is to be found in the writings of Shakespeare;-their ignorance and buffoonery are satirized pretty severely in Hamlet; while their vanity and presumption are admirably illustrated in Bottom, who as top actor would engross every capital part himself, and,

Mark'd ye that solemn pause, that whisper dread, That quick terrific start?" To Bed, to Bed!”—

though a sweet-faced man, a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day-a most lovely gentleman-like man," would roar in the lion as gently as any sucking dove, rather than Snug the joiner, who is slow of study, should fright the duchess and her ladies into applause by his extemporaneous roaring; and so versatile is his genius, that he volunteers to play Thisby in "a monstrous little voice," rather than let Francis Flute, the bellows-mender, who has " a beard coming," speak small, and "make the grove harmonious!"

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" is written not to the eye, but to the imagination ;—its aerial beings shrink from mortal touch; and Wall and Moonshine would be represented with more true effect by Bottom and his compeers, than would Oberon and Robin Goodfellow by the most skilful actor that ever trod the stage. There is a charm about the personification of a good acting play, that identifies in our minds the idea of the theatre, and "the well-graced actor," with the play itself; and, however delightful it may be to contemplate this drama as the fairy tale of our youth, or, in after-life, as a beautiful dramatic poem, we miss the charm just alluded to. The poet may give "to airy nothing a local habitation and a name," and we can accompany him in his wildest flights; but no "mortal creature of earth's mould" can personify his lovely fairies. They are too true to their own identity-too airy-too impalpable.

The chief characteristics of the language are sweetness and delicacy. The similes are taken from flowers, stars, dews, fruits-from all that is brightest and loveliest in nature. Amidst Titania's flowers, which shall I select?

In Jaffier's frantic wife, that steadfast grief,
Which knows no intermission, no relief,

"Earthlier happy is the rose distill'd

Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,
Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness."

"Your eyes are lode-stars, and your tongue's sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear,

When wheat is green-when hawthorn-buds appear."

"The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hyems' chin and icy crown,
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds,
Is, as in mockery, set."

But even this midnight fancy, Shakespeare makes a vehicle for some of those profound reflexions that mark all his productions. What a beautiful comment on the master-passion of our youth is the following:

Ah, me! for aught that ever I could read,-
Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth!"

The pathetic lines on female friendship, beginning" Injurious Hermia," and Theseus' noble description of his hounds, are full of poetic rapture; but the most celebrated passage, which no poet that ever lived has equalled, and which Shakespeare himself has not surpassed, is,—

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold :
This is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.

But preys upon the mind, distracts the brain,
And gives all uncontroll'd the passions reign,
Till madness, while usurping Reason's throne,
Starts at the Form she knows to be her own ?*.
Ye who have seen the full meridian blaze,
The glorious light of long departed days,

The poet's eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And, as imagination bodies forth

The form of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name!"

The "fine phrenzy" here described, receives its noblest illustration from the poet's own description; and the imagination all compact" that could produce a piece of such high inspiration, may well claim to soar above every other to the end of time.

*The finest exhibitions of madness that I remember, were the Lady Macbeth and Belvidera of Siddons, and Kemble's Lear. The awful tranquillity and terrific energy of Siddons were of the highest order. The cast-iron rigidity of Young, the intense glow-the concentration of Kean, and the subtle spirituality of Macready, were not equal to the distraction of the broken-hearted old King, venting itself in bitter curses on his ungrateful daughters, melting into tenderness, and sinking into exhaustion and childhood. Next to Siddons and Kemble, was the frantic Ubaldo of Signor Ambrogetti, in the opera of " Agnese," a picture of deep misery portrayed with wonderful truth.

When justly to declare, the task was hard,
Which triumph'd most; the actor, or the bard—
Shall mourn—the voice, that mute attention draws,
The speaking eye, that fills up ev'ry pause,
Should their regard from fleeting memory claim,
And live, but by traditionary fame.

Blest be the Painter's art, by which we trace The various wonders of the actor's face; That brings, to nature and expression true, Each passion, look, and gesture forth to view; And gives that record art alone can give, And bids to future times the semblance live.

Long time elaps'd ere Shakespeare's hand divine

* Of the Drama, Shakespeare was the morning-star and the meridian; and if we compare the authors who flourished at the commencement of his career, with the great poet himself, his contemporaries, and immediate successors, we shall be astonished to find that the infancy and maturity of the stage should embrace a period of but little more than thirty to forty years. The dawn of Shakespeare dispelled the shadows, clouds, and darkness that rested on the dramatic horizon, and with him arose a host of stars that gathered glory from his beams. The most illustrious, and next in rank to himself, is Philip Massinger, of whose life little or nothing is known, beyond the melancholy fact, that he was a literary way-farer, eking out a penurious existence in humble obscurity, and that his transcendent genius,